“Actually, I don’t,” Dave said. “Since I’m not a member of either camp, Sheriff Maxwell asked me to take charge of you. You need to be decked out in your own Kevlar vest, one that you can wear under civilian clothes. You also need working ID badges that’ll let you in and out of the department as well as in and out of this end of the building. That way you won’t have to call down and ask for an escort.”
“Which reminds me,” Ali said. “Who is the sourpuss behind the partition out in the public lobby? She acted like she was ready to bite my head off.”
“A younger woman, but not all that good-looking?” Dave asked. “She wears glasses and sort of resembles a horned toad?”
Ali couldn’t quite suppress a giggle. Dave’s incredibly uncomplimentary description was also on the money.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s the one.”
“That’s Holly Mesina, Sally Harrison’s best friend. The two of them go way back.”
“I take it she’s not too happy about any of what’s going on,” Ali said, “and most especially my showing up on the scene?”
“That’s right,” Dave said. “She thinks it’s all a witch hunt on Gordy’s part.”
“As in, any friend of my enemy is my enemy,” Ali added.
“You’ve got it,” Dave agreed. “Now, how about that cup of coffee? Then we’ll take care of the Kevlar vest, not that you’re ever going to need it.”
CHAPTER 3
It was a grueling week. On the days Ali had to go all the way to Prescott, the three-hour round-trip made her think she was back to doing a southern California commute, except for the fact that there was a lot less traffic. And far more varied terrain.
On Friday, to reach the sheriff’s Seligman substation, she’d had to pass through Flagstaff and a vast ponderosa forest. Today, on her way to visit the substation in Congress, she had to drive through Prescott and then down Yarnell Hill, passing from pine to pinon to prickly pear and yucca and finally to saguaro.
When Ali had worked on the East Coast, she had discovered there were plenty of people there who assumed that Arizona was all saguaros all the time, but that wasn’t true. Saguaros are picky about where they grow, and they like to grow together. No matter how many times Ali drove down to the desert valleys that surrounded Sedona, she always watched for the first sentinel saguaro. In this case, the first one was at the top of a cliff near milepost 274. Soon there were dozens more.
Shortly after passing that outpost saguaro, she ran into a road-widening project. When a flagger stopped her to wait for the return of a pilot car, Ali leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, and thought about what she was doing.
Right, she thought. Something for the home team.
It was ironic to think that the inspiring words Ali had delivered so cheerfully to the graduating seniors a week earlier were now coming back to haunt her. Other than Dave Holman and Sheriff Maxwell himself, no one else on the sheriff’s office “home team” had been what you could call welcoming of the new arrival.
The previous Monday, when Gordon Maxwell had introduced her at the staff meeting, Ali had assumed that the surly greeting she had received from Holly Mesina, the clerk in the outer office, had been an aberration. A week and a day later, Ali understood that Dave’s reaction was the exception, while Holly Mesina’s was the rule.
During the remainder of the week Ali had followed Sheriff Maxwell on his round of duties around the office as well as out in the community. She had also visited the various substations scattered around the huge county. At each stop along the way, Ali had grown accustomed to the idea that departmental employees would put on their happy faces with her as long as the sheriff was present, but the moment Maxwell’s back was turned and the boss was out of earshot, their skin-deep civility toward Ali vanished.
Their reactions made her position in the culture of the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Department blatantly clear-Ali Reynolds was the ultimate outsider.
Sort of like what happened to Haley Marsh when she first showed up at Mingus Union High School, Ali thought ruefully. Of course, there’s a difference. I could quit. Haley couldn’t.
Ali had told her father that very thing the previous afternoon toward the end of a Memorial Day cookout at Chris and Athena’s house, where the newlyweds had marked the six-month anniversary of their wedding by hosting a shakedown test hamburger fry on Chris’s new gas barbecue.
“So how are things?” Bob Larson had asked his daughter as the two of them sat on the small patio next to the driveway, enjoying the afternoon sun. “You look glum-not at all your usual self. Is it work?”
Ali nodded. “Don’t tell Mom,” she said.
“I don’t have to,” Bob observed cheerfully. “I’m pretty sure she already knows.”
“Great,” Ali muttered. “I suppose that means I’ll get the third degree from her, too.”
“Not necessarily,” Bob said. “How about if you tell me and I tell her? What’s going on?”
“It turns out your daughter is a pawn, caught between two feuding unions. When I walk into a room-it doesn’t matter if it’s the break room, an office, or a lobby-people simply stop talking. When I try to interact with them, they answer direct questions only. The other day somebody left a paper Burger King crown on the seat of my desk down at Village of Oak Creek, and on Friday, when I drove up to Ash Fork and Seligman to introduce myself to the folks up there, someone let the air out of three of my tires.”
“So the people you have to work with all think you’re stuck-up, and as far as the tires are concerned, no one saw a thing,” Bob said. “Right?”
“Right,” Ali agreed.
“So how many more of these introductory substation visits do you have to do?”
“I have to drive down to Congress tomorrow. That’s it.”
Just then Athena had emerged from the house carrying a pitcher of iced tea. “Refills, anybody?” she asked.
Athena, an Iraq war veteran, had returned from her national guard deployment minus two limbs-her right arm below the elbow and her right leg below the knee. She had become amazingly proficient at using her two high-tech prosthetic limbs, but she had also made great progress on becoming a lefty. She wielded the full pitcher without any problems or spills.
Ali’s father waited until Athena went back inside before he spoke again. “What those guys are doing is hazing you.”
Ali laughed. “Do you think?”
“And they’re watching to see how you react.”
“Correct.”
“So don’t give them the satisfaction,” Bob said. “Besides, you know what your aunt Evie would say.”
For years, until her death from a massive stroke, Ali’s aunt Evie, Edie Larson’s twin sister, had been partners with Ali’s parents in the Sugarloaf Cafe, a restaurant started originally by Ali’s grandmother. Aunt Evie had always been considered the wild one in the family. She had also been one of the most positive people Ali knew.
“I’m sure she’d say, ‘Brighten the corner where you are,’” Ali said with a laugh, remembering some of her aunt Evie’s Auntie Mame antics. That particular line had come from one of Aunt Evie’s favorite hymns, and it had been her personal watchword.
“Exactly,” Bob said.
“What do you say?” Ali asked. She liked her parents and was interested in their opinions.
“If there’s a rattler in your yard, wouldn’t you rather know where he is?”
Ali nodded.
“So make friends with your enemies,” Bob advised. “It’ll surprise the hell out of them.”
When the barbecue ended, Ali went home to her new place on Manzanita Hills Road. She had taken a crumbling jewel of midcentury modern architecture that had never been updated and brought it into the twenty-first century. She had invested money, time, and effort in the process. Leland, who had more or less come with the house, had fought the remodeling war at her side. Now he and Ali were both enjoying the fruits of their labors-a job well
